A Time For Everything (Funeral Message) - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Warren Saunders Funeral - April 27, 2023

We have gathered to remember Warren Saunders. We have gathered to mourn his loss and also to celebrate his life.

And as we considered what might be a meaningful passage from Scripture to reflect upon, this passage was suggested, and it resonated with Ann Marie and Peter.

The passage might be familiar to you. It was written by Solomon, the son of King David. Solomon was considered the wisest person of all time in his day, and for many, since his day.

The passage is from Ecclesiastes, a book in which Solomon expresses a great deal of existential angst. At the very least he seems to be struggling openly with the meaning of life.

But here’s what he writes in chapter 3:

A Time for Everything

1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

While he's still sorting through questions about the hardship of life and the meaning of life, he does establish that Seasons exist, and the seasons exist for a reason.

Time exists, and Time exists for a reason. Time brackets everything, gives a framework for everything.

Time helps us to make sense of many things, whether or not it is much of a consolation is perhaps still an open question for Solomon.

Someone said: “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”

Someone else said: “Time is nature’s way to keep everything from happening all at once.”

And using the framework of time, Solomon says some things that are both very obvious at one level, and individually and collectively can be seen as quite meaningful at another.

He also speaks of universal realities and common human experience.

Everything that occurs has its place, even though some things can very much feel like an unwelcome intrusion.

So as part of his quest in this book of Ecclesiastes to make sense of the challenge or the drama of existence, Solomon makes these observations.

He does so in the form of couplets which create a helpful contrast between the things that he was pondering.

There is a time to be born. Typically this is anticipated and experienced with a sense of hope and joy. Barbara and I are about to become grandparents for a second time to our second grandson.

Our experience with our first grandson, Stevie, has been nothing but joyful and life-affirming and life-giving. That is the nature of birth and life.

And then by contrast, there is a time to die. This is what we are a part of today, a part of recognizing that a beloved friend or family member, Warren Saunders, has died.

It's very important to recognize, acknowledge and celebrate a birth. It is equally critical to recognize, acknowledge and find our way to be able to celebrate the life of the person who has now passed.

Just as life itself is a journey, the acceptance of the reality of death is also a journey, experienced incrementally, often painfully, but of course very necessarily.

And yet, as Helen Keller said: “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose; all that we deeply love becomes a part of us.”

Solomon speaks to many other such couplets or contrasting ideas.

There is a time to plant and a time to uproot. So much of Warren Saunder’s life was spent planting in Spring and harvesting.

Those like Ann-Marie and Leslie and others who have worked for so long alongside Warren know that there is a seeming endless list of strategies and actions and adaptations and weather-minding and informed prognostication involved in planting and harvesting.

It’s a full life investment, especially to do it as superbly as Warren Saunders did, and then pass it to his family to do.

There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. In a sense these are worlds unto themselves. Weeping and mourning involve deep travail and anguish.